


the great wide nothing

by revolutionator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionator/pseuds/revolutionator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade strays into a path that isn't hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the great wide nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicalgirlMUSCLES](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalgirlMUSCLES/gifts).



> Thank you so much for all the great prompts!! I only wish I'd been able to write something for all of them!

_When its fingers comb out in the dark wild nothing something weaves so imperceptibly between its digits that at first, it does not notice anything is floating between them._

 

_It is one of many, many thick forces out in the groaking dark, tendrils sweating planets, its mouths expelling sulphur and airless voice. It is not human, and neither are its dwindling trillions of sibling-selves, and unlike humans it does not feel shame when it makes a mistake. Even an important mistake, like stopping curious little girls from stumbling into space they aren't levelled enough to comprehend._

 

_'Oh,' whimpers a small alien voice. The sound almost gets swallowed up in the void, but It, finally noticing something amiss, notices the voice at the last second and plucks its owner out of the ether._

 

_The girl in question is miniscule, so tiny that it takes great concentration just to conceptualise her - so very, very small in comparison to Its vastness. But It recognises that she is neither of the aliens they have built up rapport with._

 

_It whispers in relays to its remaining peers, and in under a second they have all decided to make the best of an unfortunate mistake._

 

**ＧＲＲＲＲＮＧＨ　ＡＹＬＲＹＴ** **Ｍ’ＮＧＡＢＬ** **ＫＲＥＹＨ** _, It greets her,_ **ＦＲＹＳＴＨ** **ＷＡＮＰＲＲ** **Ｌ’ＰＬＡＴ．**

 

_Small girl freezes still in the dull sanctuary between its limbs, her eyes so wide in her tiny face that It can almost see them._

 

**ＦＲＥＮＥＴＨ．** **ＦＲＥＮＥＴＨ．　ＡＳＧＲＴＨＨ，　ＰＬＵＣＴＯＲＹ．**

 

_'Yes,' she mouths with her solitary human lips. They are in business again._

 

 

Jade hadn't intended on wandering quite so far in her sleep, but then, that was how things always ended up lately. As someone with pre-existing knowledge of this silly game, you would really expect her to have more of a handle on how far to take things! Instead here she was floating in the middle of outer space with no cloying fishtroll guide to lead her onwards and no dog to take her back home.

 

And there she went thinking about Bec again. Crying in your dreams was very tough to pull off, but if she kept up _that_ line of thought she would probably manage it.

 

Enough of that, then. Time to think about how to make her way back to the bubbles. Safe, warm memory bubbles. Jade had seen enough of _this_ dark, warped place to last her several game-elongated lifetimes.

 

Twisting one way and another in the darkness didn't yield much. Swimming through the blackness wasn't any better – the air around her, or lack of it, was uncomfortable and sticky, sort of like swimming through sweat. It kind of felt _alive_ in its own way, which was even more shudderworthy to consider.

 

'Feferi,' she tried, only for her own voice to instantly suck itself into silence.

 

Nothing responded. No surprise there.

 

She wandered further, figuring that if she just kept moving through the dark she would eventually work herself back round to the place she'd come from. How had she even managed to lose track of the bubbles in the first place? Weren't they supposed to be very large and expressly intended for stranded dreamers like herself? Feferi was going to get a long letter of complaint from her, that much was for sure!

 

Floating where she was, treading spacewater beneath her sneakers, she realised that the texture around her had changed. Now it held an unfamiliar viscosity, and all around her was a meaty, sonorous rumbling that sounded more and more like breathing the longer it went on.

 

Her own breathing slowed to accommodate for it. (She had already wondered how dream-breathing worked and decided it was low on her list of worries.) Jade didn't even hear the 'oh' that slipped out by accident; she didn't know she'd spoken at all.

 

So the universe seemed to fold up around her suddenly and of its own volition. Her fingers scrabbled for futile purchase on existence around her, and one of her hands felt as though it was being sucked into a pocket of denser air – she struggled to tug herself away from the pull, and floated in what felt like neutral ground.

 

Then the cacophony started.

 

She could feel it rumbling in her stomach, her heart, her eyesockets. Something was _talking to her_. Jade, well equipped in talking without speech – especially in her dreams – tried her best to listen. But she couldn't draw any sense out. Where was Rose and her big grimoire of unpronouncable clacking?

 

What she _could_ sense in some essential way was frustration – on the speaker's part, not her own. Call it weird, but it felt like the thing was echolating inside her, looking for something to bounce off and coming up empty. It needed something from her that it was expecting.

 

Another loud rumble. This one more insistent.

 

'Yes,' she said without thinking, knowing without knowing that it had asked for her permission.

 

It got louder. Much louder than she believed possible – every cell in her body started going berserk, vibrating and vibrating until she felt like she was going to explode, or at the _very_ least melt into a muddle of Harleysoup. The voices started to make more sense.

 

Jade lifted her hands up to her ears and felt anger coursing through her. Anger at Feferi at first; _her stupid, stupid dreambubble deal with those big stupid monsters was supposed to have kept her from doing this all over again, she was so tired so tired so TIRED of hideous awful nightmares and her head squalling with white noise_ – then that meagre annoyance fanned into a flame. _Karkat, how dare Karkat spend so much time aggravating her at crucial moments, why would anyone push her into this mess in the first place, stupid Tavros, his fault she lost both parts of the only corporeal family she'd ever known, stupid John for not waking up in time, stupid Dave, stupid Rose, stupid stupid Rose for not being here when she'd have been a much better conduit for this endless outpouring of grimness and darkness..._

 

She started to scream. Her fingers pressed hard into her own temples. Stars spun in beautiful, nonsensical patterns in front of her eyes as the fury filled her up from the inside. With the fury came power, she was becoming dimly aware. She just had to sit back and give herself over, and she could control it.

 

_WRRRRRRRRRR_

 

All at once the noise withdrew.

 

She was left alone, still pedalling her feet through the zerospace, eyes smoking and sparking. Her hands shook when she took them away from her face.

 

Her fingers, usually brown and slightly freckled, were a monochrome matte grey. Her forearms too. She touched her face again, whimpering with the aftershock, her brain still spitting out unwarranted bits of vitriol like _where WAS rose_ and _some kind of dream THIS is,_ but the voices were with her now. A soothing thrum instead of a shrieking wall of noise.

 

'You're here to help me,' she said uncertainly. 'To help me fight?'

 

_Yes._

 

'And... and you want me to help you in return, if I can.'

 

Nothing for seconds, aeons, and then:

 

_It is not a question of can. You need to._

 

Jade chewed at her lower lip, gently, so that she wouldn't wake herself up.

 

_We were expecting another ambassador more attuned with our goals, but you will do._

 

She reached out one of her hands into the darkness and touched it as best she could. She could feel the pockets of absence anew and now she could feel that they hurt – they were wounds in Whatever-It-Was, and thy were killing it. The bitter angry taste churned in her mouth once more.

 

'I'll help,' she whispered to it in eldritch, and she kissed the bare air.

 

 

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] \--

GG: ｒｏｓｅ　ａｒｅ　ｙｏｕ　ｔｈｅｒｅ  
GG: ｒｏｏｏｏｏｏｏｓｅ  


GG: ｉ　ｇｕｅｓｓ　ｙｏｕ　ａｒｅｎｔ　  
GG:　ｔｈａｔｓ　ｆｉｎｅ！！！！　＜３  
GG:　ｉｍ　ｊｕｓｔ　ｐａｓｓｉｎｇ　ｏｎ　ａ　ｍｅｓｓａｇｅ　ｔｈａｔ　ｙｏｕ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｎｅｅｄ　ｔｏ　ｗｏｒｒｙ　ａｎｙｍｏｒｅ  
GG:　ｉ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｔａｋｅ　ｃａｒｅ　ｏｆ　ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｙｏｕ　ｗｏｒｒｙ  
  
\-- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] \--   
  
TT: You'd take this gambit from me too, Jade?  
TT: Perhaps caligulasAquarium was none too far from the mark.  
TT: ...I'm coming to help you.  
TT: Wait for me.

_Space remains very dark and very cold, and the things living in it wait for Jade Harley to make her way back to the waking world with her anger following her like a comet's tail. Not the orthodox choice, they agree amongst themselves._   
  
_But one that will do._


End file.
